Law Firm, Bob Dole Behind the Taiwan Phone Call to Trump

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There is always more to the story right? Yes….and this phone call that set the White House and State Department on their heads when Trump received a phone call from the President of Taiwan, President Tsai Ing-wen. What has not been answered is did anyone in the Trump operation have advanced knowledge of the call or did they understand the policy ramifications for the long term when it comes to conditions in the region?

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Alston & Bird Central to Trump’s Taiwanese Phone Call

TAL: Former senator and Alston & Bird special counsel Bob Dole told The Wall Street Journal Monday that he and his firm helped arrange the president-elect’s taboo-breaking Friday telephone call with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen. “It’s fair to say that we may have had some influence,” Dole told the paper.

Dole and Ted Schroeder, a former Senate Democratic aide who joined Alston & Bird in January as counsel in its Legislative and Public Policy Group, are on a $20,000-a-month retainer to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, according to a lobbyist filing dated April 30. The office is Taiwan’s alternative to an embassy or consulate, handling foreign affairs and services for the Republic of China, commonly known as Taiwan.

In the lobbyist filing, Alston & Bird reported making routine diplomatic contacts on behalf of Taiwan’s U.S. representative. Awkwardly, the firm opened a three-lawyer Beijing office in January, specializing in IP, trade, tort and cyber disputes for Chinese clients in American forums.  Alston & Bird did not respond to a request for comment. Daniel Huang, a spokesman for the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, said the office had no comment.

Breaking a diplomatic taboo that dates to 1979, the U.S. call with Taiwan’s head of state roiled the chattering classes in both nations, perhaps because China has more than 1,600 ballistic and cruise missiles facing the Taiwan Strait, and dozens aimed at the U.S. A far more measured but nontrivial way for China to retaliate would be for it to return once again to cyberespionage, whose decline was an unsung Obama success. Nick Rossmann of FireEye iSIGHT Intelligence says that while he detects no new change in hacking patterns, “an economic downturn in China coupled with a deterioration in the U.S.-Chinese bilateral relationship would be key factors in a shift to ramp up operations to steal IP.”

The Taiwan call made a parlor game of guessing Trump’s motives for lightly playing with the world’s highest concentration of missiles, and tweaking a rising superpower that fights to keep its own military’s jingoists in check.

“Defensiveness, ignorance, impulsivity, considered aggressive behavior, on-going real estate negotiations?” muses Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo. “Not having a clear idea about which of these factors is driving decisions is and will be one of the joys of the Trump years.”

Initial speculation centered on ignorance or impulsivity. “This has all the earmarks of randomness on the U.S. side,” a senior Bush diplomat told Politico. Others noted a Taiwanese newspaper report, denied by the Trump Organization, that Trump was considering a luxury development near Taipei’s airport. The New York Times reported that a sales manager overseeing Asia for Trump Hotels had visited Taiwan in October, a trip that she recorded on her Facebook page.

As the consensus shifted toward “considered aggressive behavior” (or at least considered by Trump’s aides), the first reports pointed the finger at former Dick Cheney aide and Heritage Foundation scholar Stephen Yates. But Yates denied the reports, while voicing warm support for the reckless break in protocol.

Thanks to Dole’s candor, we now know who really deserves blame for Trump’s first foreign policy blunder. And to ignorance, impulsivity, aggression and conflicts, we must add another animating factor. Even in the drained swamp of Trump’s Washington, don’t discount the power of lobbying.

Van Jones is Behind this Electoral College Vote Challenge

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July, 2016:

PHILADELPHIA— Self-described “communist” and “rowdy black nationalist” Van Jones is starting a new “social justice” public relations outfit to be called Megaphone Strategies.

The firm touts itself as a “social justice media strategy firm run for purpose, not profit.” (Good luck with your efforts to circumvent human nature, Comrade Jones.) Molly Haigh, communications director for the Progressive Change Campaign Committee is his partner in this new adventure in antisocial activism.

Jones, who was President Obama’s green jobs czar until it was revealed that he was a 9/11 truther, will chair the organization’s board while Haigh will be president and oversee five staffers in the beginning.

AdWeek’s Fishbowl DC blog reports, quoting Jones:

Everywhere we look, we discover courageous people finding ways to break down barriers and solve tough problems. We need to hear their voices, and we need to elevate their work,” said Van Jones of the reason behind the firm’s creation, which will offer strategy, publicity, media training and event/social justice campaign planning services.

Megaphone’s clients include Vote.org, the ACORN-affiliated Working Families Party, and Demand Progress.

Jones, by the way, said Donald Trump’s speech on the closing day of the Republican National Convention makes him an American Hitler.

Well, actually, the America-hating communist didn’t literally say that but he came fairly close.

Although Trump’s speech was widely applauded in Republican circles, Jones called it a “schizophrenic psychopathic attempt to pull apart the Obama coalition,” like a moment “where there’s some big authoritarian movement, and some leader that’s rising up,” and “a disgrace.”

What do you expect from someone who hates everything America stands for?

What Jones said about Trump’s address probably isn’t anywhere near the worst garbage to have spewed from his mouth on CNN where he is a paid contributor. His commentary throughout the Republican National Convention in Cleveland last week was fairly uniformly malicious, ugly, and unfair.

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Megaphone Strategies lists a majority of its clients as environmental and “social justice” organizations such as 350.org, Green For All, Democracy Fund, and Demand Progress. More here.

Going back to 2009, Van Jones called the Republicans ‘assholes’ before his audience at a time when he worked for the Obama White House.

Aleppo: Tell Our Story After we are Gone

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Update as of 2:24 EST, December 13, 2016, a truce and a cease fire announced.

The Syrian government has established control over eastern Aleppo, Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s Ambassador to the United Nations, told the UN Security Council on Tuesday. More from CNN.

It was October of 2016, that I interviewed Abdulkafi Al-Hamdo that is mentioned weeks later, today, in this article. He told me the same then, don’t cry for us, tell our story. You could hear the reckoning in his voice, his time on earth was short. (Segment 2) Barack Obama and John Kerry own this genocide and hence should be the mantle of their policy legacy.

 

Last Rebels in Aleppo Say Assad Forces Are Burning People Alive

As the Syrian dictator’s coalition captures the last rebel-held neighborhoods, residents are bidding the world farewell and opposition media says mass atrocities have already begun.

DailyBeast: Amid celebratory gunfire and cheers from Assad loyalists, foreign militias under Iranian command and troops loyal to the regime on Monday captured about 90 percent of the opposition-held areas of eastern Aleppo.

The last hope of the besieged rebels, most of whom seem to have withdrawn in the face of certain defeat, had been to receive reinforcements or resupplies from their counterparts in the southern and western suburbs. That option has now been foreclosed upon as these routes are completely interdicted by the regime.

The triumphal takeover of the citadel of the Syrian revolution followed a day of intense bombing of houses and apartment buildings, destroying so many that it was impossible to determine the death toll. The neighborhoods of Bustan al-Qasr, al-Kallasa, al-Farod and al-Salhin in the Old City, as well as Sheikh Saed, in the southern district, are all now under regime control.

The Syrian Civil Defense, or White Helmets, an internationally renowned team of first responders, said more than 90 bodies of people presumed to be still alive are under debris and that its volunteer staff reported they could hear the voices of children trapped in the rubble of their houses.

A member of the group in Aleppo told al-Arabiya TV on Monday night that men, women, and children were huddling and crying in the streets and at the gates of empty buildings in the few neighborhoods that remained in the hands of the opposition. He described the situation as hopeless, because precision munitions and indiscriminate barrel bombs had destroyed the city’s medical facilities, ambulances, and fuel supply.

Unconfirmed reports, circulated by opposition media, suggest that mass atrocities have already begun, such as the summary executions of 17 in al-Kalaseh neighborhood, 22 in Bostan al-Kasrand, and the immolation of four women and nine children on al-Firdous Street. The Daily Beast could not independently confirm these figures.

The official Syrian news agency SANA claimed that eight people were killed and 47 were injured in regime-held Aleppo after opposition fighters bombed the city. Most of the victims were women and children, according to the agency.

Activists and residents of the ever-dwindling opposition pocket, an urban islet of about five square kilometers and home to as many as 100,000 people, spent the day signing off from social media, asking journalists to tell their story, and warning of their impending demise.

The Daily Beast was able to get in touch with Abdulkafi Al-Hamdo, a university teacher in the besieged city. The brief conversation was as follows:

TDB: “I hope you’re safe.”

AA: “I don’t think I will be tomorrow.”

TDB: “Do you expect all the remaining besieged neighborhoods will fall by tomorrow?”

AA: “No. Except over the body of every civilian. I won’t surrender my body, and my wife, and my daughter to the Assad regime without defending them… I hope that you’ll tell everyone what I’m saying.”

On a publicly visible WhatsApp feed belonging to the Aleppo Siege Media Center, al-Hamdo was more fatalistic. “Doomsday is held in Aleppo,” he said. “People are running don’t know where. People are under the rubble alive and no one can save them. Some people are injured in the streets and no one can go to help them [because] the bombs are [falling on] the same place.”

Award-winning blogger and activist Marcell Shehwaro, a native of Aleppo, shared on Facebook a message from one of her most “peaceful” and least-sectarian friends. “No Marcell, don’t worry,” it read. “I will kill myself, I won’t let them arrest me.”

Lina al-Shamy, a 26-year-old woman, posted a video of herself to Twitter. Speaking in fluent English, al-Shamy said: “To everyone who can hear me. We are here exposed to a genocide in the besieged city of Aleppo. This may be my last video. More than 50,000 civilians who rebelled against the dictator, al-Assad, are threatened with field executions or dying under bombing. According to activists, more than 180 people have been field executed in the areas the regime has recently retook control of by Assad’s gangs and the militias that support them. The civilians are stuck in a very small area that doesn’t exceed two square kilometers. With no safe zones, no life, every bomb is a new massacre. Save Aleppo, save humanity.”

Jouad al-Khateb had a similar message—one hesitates to call it valedictory— for the world. In Arabic, he told the camera: “Behind me is the Bustan al-Qasr neighborhood. Since last night up to the present moment, it is being bombed with every kind of weapon; vacuum rockets, missiles. The rockets have not stopped since last night. The people coming out of Bustan al-Qasr are telling me it’s become a city of ghosts. More than 20 families remain under the rubble across various districts.” The White Helmets were unable to reach any of the victims, al-Khateb added.

“My message to those watching: Just stop the waterfall of blood for us. We don’t want to leave the besieged areas. Just stop the waterfall of blood. It’s as if this has become very normal for the international community, you know, a rocket falls, 20 or 30 people are killed, under the rubble, they can’t pull them out—that’s a totally normal thing. In any case, there’s no space for graves to bury them in. Let them be buried under the buildings. I think this will be my last video, because we’ve gotten bored of talking, bored of speeches.”

Al-Khateb was interrupted by a loud groaning sound.

“That’s a barrel bomb,” he said, referring to one of the regime’s most notorious improvised munitions, a metal canister filled with high explosives and shrapnel, which are dropped indiscriminately from helicopters.

Another trapped resident, Ameen al-Halabi, boasted on Facebook, “I’m waiting for death or imprisonment by the Assad forces. I would rather die on the soil of my land than be arrested by their faithless militias.” Al-Halabi asked his friends to forgive him if this was the last message he wrote.

On several rebel chat forums on the popular messaging application Telegram, there were calls for the youth of Syria to wage “jihad” against the conquerors of Aleppo, if only to defend the honor of women who had allegedly been raped in the course of the Assadist blitzkrieg.

Whether or not that particular war crime has yet occurred in Aleppo—though human-rights monitors have documented mass rape in Syrian regime prisons since the start of the conflict—the call for holy war against the regime may yet take hold. For this reason, the CIA and Joints Chiefs of Staff earlier advised the Obama administration that the fall of eastern Aleppo, apart from being a humanitarian catastrophe, would also constitute a counterterrorism threat to the United States. The radicalization of survivors is all but a foregone conclusion.

As for those already radicalized, they’ve had a remarkably auspicious week. While the regime was focused on reclaiming Aleppo, ISIS, or the self-proclaimed Islamic State, was able to completely retake another ancient Syrian city, Palmyra, which it had lost, to much international fanfare, last March.

Despite the gravity of the day’s events, and the many breaches of international law that led to the collapse of the rebel-held area, U.S. political leaders were slow to comment. President Obama has watched in silence as Russia and the Assad regime have committed what Secretary of State John Kerry called crimes against humanity, and Donald Trump has not once publicly mentioned the word “Aleppo” on his favorite social-media platform, Twitter, since being elected president of the United States a month ago. Kerry even meekly invited the Kremlin over the weekend to show “a little grace” in how it recaptured eastern Aleppo.

“The Holy Quran teaches that whoever kills an innocent is as—it is as if he has killed all mankind. And the Holy Quran also says whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind.”

So did Obama tell a receptive audience in Cairo, in 2009, in a much-scrutinized maiden speech of his administration. (The second line in this sacred allusion, as it happens, is also the mantra of the now-helpless White Helmets.)

The president who came to office promising to repair the breach between the United States and the Islamic world, putatively caused by the war on terror and the invasion and occupation of Iraq, is now set to leave office having done little to stop to the slaughter or displacement of millions in Syria or the wholesale destruction of one of Islam’s most venerated cities.

The Final Hours for Aleppo

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Aleppo The Finale Hours

The end nears for besieged eastern Aleppo with 99% of the enclave now captured by the Syrian regime the last 2% with some estimated 200,000 civilians still inside is under heavy air and ground bombardment thousands of men and young boys who have surrenderd and past to the regime side of Aleppo are reported as missing corpses and dying peole are said to litter the battered area with no medical or rescue services left intact food water and electicty is depleted.

           Raw: Syrians Flee Eastern Aleppo

As the Syrian military continues to gain control of eastern Aleppo, which was previously a rebel-held enclave, thousands of civilians attempt to flee the war-torn area. (Dec. 12)

Civilians caught in the crossfire in Aleppo

CNN’s Fred Pleitgen goes inside a makeshift shelter housing displaced civilians in Jibrin, Syria.

Aleppo operation in final stages, Syrian general says

Anti-government fighters are now only in control of a small enclave in eastern Aleppo, after losing the important district of Sheikh Saeed in the early hours of Monday.

Russian State, Non-State Cyber Intrusions Sway Voting/Political Decisions

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In October, before the U.S. presidential election, a Russian man suspected of carrying out cyberattacks against U.S. targets was arrested in Prague and was also wanted by Interpol. What information could have been gained in this case that has provided additional evidence to government officials for further investigations? Anyone remember in 2012 when the Russian hacked LinkedIn?

Everyone appears to be in denial about the ability and reasons that Russia and or their non-state actors swayed the U.S. campaign and voting process. No one official has ever claimed actual votes were altered, but rather the argument is actual affectation of information, attitudes and decisions by candidates and voters. There is a distinct difference and words matter.

Russia is artful when it comes to practicing hybrid warfare, cyber is but one tactic, the other successful tactic is propaganda. It works.

APT 28, Russia (Advanced Persistent Threat) has been seen to have moved on from the United States political season and turned towards Germany’s political season in recent days. This is not likely to affect vote tally results but rather polling attitudes going into consideration of votes for candidates.

This site has been writing about hacking and cyber intrusions for more than two years. While government agency officials have pointed with evidence that Russia played a significant role, it is also important to remember there are thousands of outside government cyber experts that are hired by government to protect against cyber intrusions and to investigate and report that of which is otherwise unknown by government due to being in the private sector. These are generally known as ‘White Hats’. White Hats in their forensic work look for types of penetration, commonality in code or language, trace IP addresses, concepts, malware, login files, brute force, where stolen data later appeared, partitions and code based platforms.

Let’s examine some facts and history.

It was also proven last year that as part of the Russian aggression with the Ukraine, that power grid was hacked by Russian operations. Due to major sanctions applied to Russia for at least the annexation of Crimea and the invasion of Ukraine and the continued threat to East Europe and NATO, the Russian Defense Ministry launched a more aggressive cyber command. Beyond hacking the non-classified but still a protected system at the White House in 2015, there are others of note.

In the past year, researchers have also linked Russian hackers believed to be working for the government to other spying campaigns, including against NATO, the Ukrainian government, energy companies in Poland, and an academic at an American university who was targeted because he studies Ukraine.

On Tuesday, CNN reported that according to U.S. officials, Russian hackers had penetrated portions of the White House computer network by gaining access from another “perch,” at the State Department, where intruders had gotten inside the unclassified email system.

The intrusion reported by CNN is not “a new incident,” a spokesman for the National Security Council said. Rather, it was acknowledged by the White House last year after intruders accessed an unclassified network used by the Executive Office of the President. More here.

From 2014, long before the presidential election cycle was set into motion:

As reported by Heritage, according to FBI Director James Comey, “There are two kinds of big companies in the United States. There are those who’ve been hacked…and those who don’t know they’ve been hacked.”[1]

A recent survey by the Ponemon Institute showed the average cost of cyber crime for U.S. retail stores more than doubled from 2013 to an annual average of $8.6 million per company in 2014.[2] The annual average cost per company of successful cyber attacks increased to $20.8 million in financial services, $14.5 million in the technology sector, and $12.7 million in communications industries.

This paper lists known cyber attacks on private U.S. companies since the beginning of 2014. (A companion paper discussed cyber breaches in the federal government.)[3] By its very nature, a list of this sort is incomplete. The scope of many attacks is not fully known. For example, in July, the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team issued an advisory that more than 1,000 U.S. businesses have been affected by the Backoff malware, which targets point-of-sale (POS) systems used by most retail industries.[4] These attacks targeted administrative and customer data and, in some cases, financial data.

This list includes only cyber attacks that have been made known to the public. Most companies encounter multiple cyber attacks every day, many unknown to the public and many unknown to the companies themselves.

The data breaches below are listed chronologically by month of public notice.

January

  • Target (retail). In January, Target announced an additional 70 million individuals’ contact information was taken during the December 2013 breach, in which 40 million customer’s credit and debit card information was stolen.[5]
  • Neiman Marcus (retail). Between July and October 2013, the credit card information of 350,000 individuals was stolen, and more than 9,000 of the credit cards have been used fraudulently since the attack.[6] Sophisticated code written by the hackers allowed them to move through company computers, undetected by company employees for months.
  • Michaels (retail). Between May 2013 and January 2014, the payment cards of 2.6 million Michaels customers were affected.[7] Attackers targeted the Michaels POS system to gain access to their systems.
  • Yahoo! Mail (communications). The e-mail service for 273 million users was reportedly hacked in January, although the specific number of accounts affected was not released.[8]

April

  • Aaron Brothers (retail). The credit and debit card information for roughly 400,000 customers of Aaron Brothers, a subsidiary of Michaels, was compromised by the same POS system malware.[9]
  • AT&T (communications). For two weeks AT&T was hacked from the inside by personnel who accessed user information, including social security information.[10]

May

  • eBay (retail). Cyber attacks in late February and early March led to the compromise of eBay employee log-ins, allowing access to the contact and log-in information for 233 million eBay customers.[11] eBay issued a statement asking all users to change their passwords.
  • Five Chinese hackers indicted. Five Chinese nationals were indicted for computer hacking and economic espionage of U.S. companies between 2006 and 2014. The targeted companies included Westinghouse Electric (energy and utilities), U.S. subsidiaries of SolarWorld AG (industrial), United States Steel (industrial), Allegheny Technologies (technology), United Steel Workers Union (services), and Alcoa (industrial).[12]
  • Unnamed public works (energy and utilities). According to the Department of Homeland Security, an unnamed public utility’s control systems were accessed by hackers through a brute-force attack[13] on employee’s log-in passwords.[14]

June

  • Feedly (communications). Feedly’s 15 million users were temporarily affected by three distributed denial-of-service attacks.[15]
  • Evernote (technology). In the same week as the Feedly cyber attack, Evernote and its 100 million users faced a similar denial-of-service attack.[16]
  • P.F. Chang’s China Bistro (restaurant). Between September 2013 and June 2014, credit and debit card information from 33 P.F. Chang’s restaurants was compromised and reportedly sold online.[17]

August

  • U.S. Investigations Services (services). U.S. Investigations Services, a subcontractor for federal employee background checks, suffered a data breach in August, which led to the theft of employee personnel information.[18] Although no specific origin of attack was reported, the company believes the attack was state-sponsored.
  • Community Health Services (health care). At Community Health Service (CHS), the personal data for 4.5 million patients were compromised between April and June.[19] CHS warns that any patient who visited any of its 206 hospital locations over the past five years may have had his or her data compromised. The sophisticated malware used in the attack reportedly originated in China. The FBI warns that other health care firms may also have been attacked.
  • UPS (services). Between January and August, customer information from more than 60 UPS stores was compromised, including financial data,[20] reportedly as a result of the Backoff malware attacks.
  • Defense Industries (defense). Su Bin, a 49-year-old Chinese national, was indicted for hacking defense companies such as Boeing.[21] Between 2009 and 2013, Bin reportedly worked with two other hackers in an attempt to steal manufacturing plans for defense programs, such as the F-35 and F-22 fighter jets.

September

  • Home Depot (retail). Cyber criminals reportedly used malware to compromise the credit card information for roughly 56 million shoppers in Home Depot’s 2,000 U.S. and Canadian outlets.[22]
  • Google (communications). Reportedly, 5 million Gmail usernames and passwords were compromised.[23] About 100,000 were released on a Russian forum site.
  • Apple iCloud (technology). Hackers reportedly used passwords hacked with brute-force tactics and third-party applications to access Apple user’s online data storage, leading to the subsequent posting of celebrities’ private photos online.[24] It is uncertain whether users or Apple were at fault for the attack.
  • Goodwill Industries International (retail). Between February 2013 and August 2014, information for roughly 868,000 credit and debit cards was reportedly stolen from 330 Goodwill stores.[25] Malware infected the chain store through infected third-party vendors.
  • SuperValu (retail). SuperValu was attacked between June and July, and suffered another malware attack between late August and September.[26] The first theft included customer and payment card information from some of its Cub Foods, Farm Fresh, Shop ‘n Save, and Shoppers stores. The second attack reportedly involved only payment card data.
  • Bartell Hotels (hotel). The information for up to 55,000 customers was reportedly stolen between February and May.[27]
  • U.S. Transportation Command contractors (transportation). A Senate report revealed that networks of the U.S. Transportation Command’s contractors were successfully breached 50 times between June 2012 and May 2013.[28] At least 20 of the breaches were attributed to attacks originating from China.

October

  • J.P. Morgan Chase (financial). An attack in June was not noticed until August.[29] The contact information for 76 million households and 7 million small businesses was compromised. The hackers may have originated in Russia and may have ties to the Russian government.
  • Dairy Queen International (restaurant). Credit and debit card information from 395 Dairy Queen and Orange Julius stores was compromised by the Backoff malware.[30]
  • Snapsave (communications). Reportedly, the photos of 200,000 users were hacked from Snapsave, a third-party app for saving photos from Snapchat, an instant photo-sharing app.[31]

Securing Information

As cyber attacks on retail, technology, and industrial companies increase so does the importance of cybersecurity. From brute-force attacks on networks to malware compromising credit card information to disgruntled employees sabotaging their companies’ networks from the inside, companies and their customers need to secure their data. To improve the private sector’s ability to defend itself, Congress should:

  • Create a safe legal environment for sharing information. As the leaders of technological growth, private companies are in most ways at the forefront of cyber security. Much like government agencies, companies must share information that concerns cyber threats and attack among themselves and with appropriate private-public organizations.[32] Congress needs to create a safe environment in which companies can voluntarily share information without fear of legal or regulatory backlash.
  • Work with international partners. As with the Backoff malware attacks, attacks can affect hundreds if not thousands of individual networks. These infected networks can then infect companies outside the U.S. and vice versa. U.S. and foreign companies and governments need to work together to increase overall cybersecurity and to enable action against individual cyber criminals and known state-sponsored cyber aggressors.[33]
  • Encourage cyber insurance. Successful cyber attacks are inevitable because no security is perfect. With the number of breaches growing daily, a cybersecurity insurance market is developing to mitigate the cost of breaches. Congress and the Administration should encourage the proper allocation of liability and the establishment of a cyber insurance system to mitigate faulty cyber practices and human error.[34]

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Denial or refusing the argument and examination of evidence is malfeasance and exacerbating a cyber criminal act.